From these agreeable reflections Ricardo was shaken. Lemerre
stopped. The raiders had reached the angle made by the side wall
of the garden and the house. A whisper was exchanged, and the
party turned and moved along the house wall towards the lighted
window on the ground floor. As Lemerre reached it he stooped. Then
slowly his forehead and his eyes rose above the sill and glanced
this way and that into the room. Mr. Ricardo could see his eyes
gleaming as the light from the window caught them. His face rose
completely over the sill. He stared into the room without care or
apprehension, and then dropped again out of the reach of the
light. He turned to Hanaud.
"The room is empty," he whispered. Hanaud turned to Ricardo.
"Pass under the sill, or the light from the window will throw your
shadow upon the lawn."
The party came to the back door of the house. Lemerre tried the
handle of the door, and to his surprise it yielded. They crept
into the passage. The last man closed the door noiselessly, locked
it, and removed the key. A panel of light shone upon the wall a
few paces ahead. The door of the lighted room was open. As Ricardo
stepped silently past it, he looked in. It was a parlour meanly
furnished. Hanaud touched him on the arm and pointed to the table.
Ricardo had seen the objects at which Hanaud pointed often enough
without uneasiness; but now, in this silent house of crime, they
had the most sinister and appalling aspect. There was a tiny phial
half full of a dark-brown liquid, beside it a little leather case
lay open, and across the case, ready for use or waiting to be
filled, was a bright morphia needle. Ricardo felt the cold creep
along his spine, and shivered.
"Come," whispered Hanaud.
They reached the foot of a flight of stairs, and cautiously
mounted it. They came out in a passage which ran along the side of
the house from the back to the front. It was unlighted, but they
were now on the level of the street, and a fan-shaped glass window
over the front door admitted a pale light. There was a street lamp
near to the door, Ricardo remembered. For by the light of it
Marthe Gobin had seen Celia Harland run so nimbly into this house.
For a moment the men in the passage held their breath. Some one
strode heavily by on the pavement outside--to Mr. Ricardo's ear a
most companionable sound. Then a clock upon a church struck the
half-hour musically, distantly. It was half-past eight. And a
second afterwards a tiny bright light shone. Hanaud was directing
the light of a pocket electric torch to the next flight of stairs.
Here the steps were carpeted, and once more the men crept up. One
after another they came out upon the next landing. It ran, like
those below it, along the side of the house from the back to the
front, and the doors were all upon their left hand. From beneath
the door nearest to them a yellow line of light streamed out.